speckit-cli-setup

A setup guide for the Spec Kit command-line tool. A command-line tool is a program you run from a terminal; this one is required by the other Spec Kit workflows.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to check the installed version, install the tool when it is missing, or resolve a “command not found: specify” error.
Why use it?
It detects whether the tool is installed and addresses missing or outdated installations before other Spec Kit tasks run.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/github/spec-kit-copilot/speckit-cli-setup
Any agent
npx skills add github/spec-kit-copilot --skill speckit-cli-setup
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/spec-kit-copilot

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 100 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 767 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 2 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00100 $0.00767
Opus 5 $0.00050 $0.00383
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00153
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00077

Measured yesterday against content hash 20868208c81e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

speckit-cli-setup scanned grade C with 2 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

(`curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh`, or see <https://docs.astral.sh/uv/>),

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

(`curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh`, or see <https://docs.astral.sh/uv/>),
skills/speckit-cli-setup/SKILL.md · 70 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 70 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Spec Kit — CLI setup

The Spec Kit plugin drives the specify command-line tool. Every other speckit skill assumes specify is installed and on PATH. This skill detects it and installs it when it is missing.

Detect first

Always check availability before doing anything else:

specify --version
  • Prints a version (e.g. specify 0.15.0) → the CLI is installed. If a skill needs bundle or workflow step, ensure the version is >= 0.11; if it is older, hand off to the speckit-self skill to upgrade.
  • command not found / non-zero exit → not installed. Install it (below).

Install

Spec Kit's specify CLI is published on PyPI as specify-cli. Install the latest release — this plugin is not pinned to a specific specify version. uv is the recommended installer; pipx is an alternative:

# Recommended: uv (persistent install, latest from PyPI)
uv tool install specify-cli

# Alternative: pipx (persistent install, latest from PyPI)
pipx install specify-cli

# One-off / ephemeral (no install) — handy to bootstrap a project.
# Pass --script (py keeps this cross-platform) so the PTY-backed agent shell
# doesn't hit the interactive "Choose script type" chooser and hang.
uvx --from specify-cli specify init . --integration copilot --integration-options="--skills" --script py

If neither uv nor pipx is available, tell the user to install uv first (curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh, or see https://docs.astral.sh/uv/), then re-run the install. Do not silently install system Python packages.

Verify

specify --version
specify check

Notes

  • This skill is the prerequisite for the rest of the plugin. If any speckit skill finds that specify is not available, it should run this skill's detect/install steps first, then retry.
  • For an already-installed CLI that just needs a newer version, prefer the speckit-self skill (specify self upgrade) over reinstalling. To refresh a uv/pipx install to the latest PyPI release, use uv tool upgrade specify-cli or pipx upgrade specify-cli.
  • Installing from PyPI always pulls the latest published specify-cli. Only pin a specific version (e.g. uv tool install "specify-cli==0.15.0") if you have a concrete reason to hold back.

Read the full file on GitHub · 70 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 70 lines · 100 tokens per session scan C 20868208c81e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

speckit-cli-setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository github/spec-kit-copilot (11 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 100 tokens to every session and 767 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.